Likud MK says party made deal with Shaked that she’d stay in race in order to burn moderate votes

Likud MK Yoav Kisch tells Channel 12 that his party struck a secret agreement with Jewish Home chair Ayelet Shaked in which she agreed to stay in the race until the end, despite having little chance of crossing the electoral threshold, in order to prevent more moderate voters from backing parties in the anti-Netanyahu bloc.

Asked if Shaked was promised anything in exchange, Kisch declines to comment before saying that he had not heard of any offer made to the Jewish Home chair, who wound up receiving just 1.16 percent of the vote yesterday, according to the latest tally.

Shaked sought to offer an alternative to right-wing voters uncomfortable with the more hardline nature of Likud and Religious Zionism, while clarifying that she would sit in a narrow, right-wing government with those parties. But the combination of the unpopularity of her decision to join the previous government with left-wing parties and the fear of many voters that she had no chance of crossing the threshold prevented her slate from ever taking off.